Criminal Trajectories
Further to our lively rumblings on crime and recidivism, including recent comments, Inquisitive Bird has some relevant data:
One illustrative example: people who are imprisoned in the United States have typically been arrested many times. An analysis showed that less than 5% of people admitted to prison had only been arrested the one time that led to the prison sentence… It was more common to have been arrested 30+ times than having only the single arrest that led to imprisonment. The median number of arrests was 9, and more than 3 out of 4 prisoners had been arrested 5+ times.
Another example is that nearly a third of shoplifting arrests in 2022 involved just 327 people, who collectively were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.
But the reality is even worse than this, for criminals (when asked) admit that have often committed dozens of crimes for every crime they were arrested for…
A corollary of the criminal power law is that a large fraction of crime can be prevented by addressing a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders…
In 2020, three prolific burglars were on the loose in Leinster, Ireland. Together they had accumulated over 200 convictions. But one day, they all died in a traffic accident. As a result, the robbery rate plummeted.
That would be this incident here. The gentlemen in question met their maker after colliding head-on with a lorry, while driving down the N7, at more than twice the speed limit, in the wrong direction. Their car, a stolen BMW 3 series, promptly burst into flames, making the identification of their remains a time-consuming endeavour.
Happily, the driver of the lorry survived.
Readers with an interest in the subject are advised to read the whole thing, in which eye-widening statistics abound, along with some rather sensible – and therefore terribly unfashionable – policy suggestions.
Update, via the comments:
Regarding the burglars’ demise, what catches the eye are the gushing tributes from friends and relatives, claiming, rather improbably, that the gleefully malevolent creatures were “too good for this stupid shitty world.”
As if the trio – whose activities included habitual burglary on a prodigious scale, and assaulting and mugging elderly couples and bedridden cancer patients – were somehow deserving of public sympathy. Not the numerous victims of their predations, mind, but the predators themselves. It does rather tell us something about the quality of those friends and relatives, their moral orientation.
Again, I miss the concept of shame.
Oh, and consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
A nuisance to the end.
As so often, what catches the eye are the gushing tributes from friends and relatives, claiming, rather improbably, that the gleefully malevolent creatures were “too good for this stupid shitty world.”
As if the trio – whose activities included habitual burglary on a prodigious scale, and assaulting and mugging elderly couples and bedridden cancer patients – were somehow deserving of public sympathy. Not the victims of their predations, mind, but the predators themselves. It does rather tell us something about the quality of those friends and relatives, their moral orientation.
Again, I miss the concept of shame.
Would it be callous to express hope that they were killed not instantly by the collision but slowly by the fire?
Keep going, you’re almost there…
Criminals exist within a subculture of tolerance, support, and approval. That subculture ought to be the target of official and unofficial intolerance of the most extreme sort.
That subculture consists not only of the criminals’ friends and family, but also of the “progressive minded people” who claim that criminals are “victims of society” who deserve our sympathy and who insist that we must treat them with utmost leniency.
I miss, as well, the concept of outlawry for society’s enemies.
[ Post updated. ]
This comes up frequently and while I’m somewhat inclined to agree with the general sentiment that crime can be dealt with, at least for now, by addressing that 5% or so, it is wishful thinking that the 5% is some sort of upper limit. As if the otherwise law abiding aren’t drawn to criminal behavior when they see the 5% so openly getting away with it. In recent progressive retail experience links, more and more persons of not-color seem to be showing up frequently. 5% is an encouraging number insofar as an indication that the problem is manageable if a society actually wants to address the problem but given how bloody f’n stupid our society is, I am not encouraged that the implied solution is the take-away from this for most people with influence.
Perhaps the single most important factor in the decline of Western civilization is that a large share of the incredibly stupid ideas come from persistently radical academics and their political implementers who are never held accountable for their actions. Unlike these criminal scum, their ridiculous, stupid, frequently proven wrong ideas are much more contagious.
The concept of “open classrooms” that was popular back in the 60’s/70’s comes up often among my friends and my wife, whose college degree was in early childhood education. We had recently been discussing one of the middle schools that was a feeder to my high school. Built in the early 70’s (I think) the roof had collapsed once in ’78, repaired, collapsed again a few years ago and was finally bulldozed and replaced. What an incredibly stupid idea. Let’s put hundreds of 12-14 year old kids all in one huge room, especially one without windows, and then try to teach them stuff. What? That’s not working? OK, we’ll just put up some flimsy partitions. A complete failure of a stupid idea. But no one paid for it. Except the stupid taxpayers. And the kids.
I’m trying to imagine how I’d react if one of my relatives had a, shall we say, extensive history of burglary, along with umpteen other crimes, and they subsequently died, injuring the innocent, while fleeing the police. It’s difficult to picture, as, so far as I’m aware, my sisters-in-law don’t make a habit of breaking into people’s homes or assaulting bedridden cancer patients.
And I think I would know if they did.
[ Makes note to pay more attention to family gossip. ]